


Hockey

by apparitionism



Series: Regent [2]
Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-07
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2018-02-03 17:13:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1752482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apparitionism/pseuds/apparitionism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time to tee up the asinine hockey-player episode. I’ve been dribbing and drabbing at this for some time, almost since it first aired, just to get the taste out of my mouth—because I like hockey and several people who play it. What I have done here is to take, from that pile of idiocy, one thing: the idea that there was a hockey player who had something to do with a mission Pete and Myka were on. In Toronto. (Okay, that’s two things.) I have combined that with the idea that H.G. holds the job spoken of in "Aliens." What could possibly go wrong?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> (P.S. Though casting notes are a fool’s game, I am sort of imagining my hockey player, who is basically here to have a chat with Myka, as played by someone Nathan Fillion-esque. Something about the way he would say the word “inseparable.”)
> 
> (P.P.S. I do not gaf what the mission in Toronto was, but I assure you nobody got pregnant for any reason.)

“So do you get up here very often? To Toronto, I mean?” The tall hockey player—tall enough for basketball, really; why did he play hockey, anyway?—seemed almost shy as he asked, and Myka smiled at him. He’d really been so nice and helpful during the whole ridiculous retrieval scenario, and she quite frankly was enjoying being the one who had to tilt her head up to look someone in the eye. She wouldn’t ever have wanted to be short, but there was something to be said for not towering over everybody in every room. Just for a little while.

“Well, sometimes. It’s a weird business. We never know where we’re going to be, really.”

“That’s gotta be difficult. For… for, I mean, relationships. I was just wondering, because maybe if you find yourself around here again, you and I could… have dinner. Or coffee, we could start with coffee.”

And just like that, Myka found herself back in high school, stunned that someone, anyone, would find her attractive enough to even notice, much less actually ask out. “That’s incredibly nice of you,” she said, and meant it.

His face lit up. “Yeah? That would be awesome, if you would. Hey, are you going back right away? Because I’m free tonight—we don’t have a game, so if you feel like it, I know some great places.”

Myka winced. In fact, Pete had already suggested that instead of trying to get a flight out tonight, they should wait till morning, because they hadn’t slept in a really long time, and reasons reasons reasons, most of them generated just to get Artie to spring for hotel rooms. Myka had tried to say that she really wanted to go home instead, but Pete kept shushing her and wouldn’t let her have the Farnsworth. She could have knocked him down and taken it, but she was too tired. So maybe he was right? Still, she’d been pretty sure she’d feel better at home than she would in a Toronto hotel room.

“I’m sure that you do,” Myka began, and his smile drooped a bit when he registered her tone, “but the thing is…”

He held up a hand. “Say no more. I get it. You’re not interested in some big lug of a hockey player. I get that a lot.”

“You do?” Myka was genuinely flabbergasted. “But you’re a professional hockey player. In _Canada_.”

“I’m no superstar on the line, so in Toronto, that makes me small potatoes. Now, if we were in Winnipeg, that’s maybe a different story,” he told her. “So it’s okay. I’m some guy from—you’ve probably never heard of where I’m from. It’s basically Gas Station, Canada. You want somebody more cosmopolitan. It’s okay,” he repeated.

“That’s not it,” Myka said. Then she stopped and tilted her head. “Although weirdly, that’s sort of it.” He drooped some more, and she hurried to say, “No, the thing is, I actually… I’m sort of…”

“You’re seeing somebody? Oh, well, that’s different. You should have said. I mean, it would have been a surprise to find that someone as… well, someone like you, _wasn’t_ seeing somebody.” He nodded, as if this settled things. He actually seemed reasonably happy.

Why Myka felt she had to go on, she had no idea. And yet there she went, and, fascinated, she watched herself go. “It’s really really complicated,” she said. “I can’t even _describe_ to you the extent to which it’s complicated.”

“Are we talking Facebook-status ‘it’s complicated’ or real-world ‘it’s complicated’?”

“If Facebook had any way at all of understanding this, I’d be amazed. The thing is, we aren’t technically supposed to be seeing each other, because of what our jobs are right now, but we both—I mean, this person and I—we’ve been through a lot together. Apart, but also together. And we had some miscommunication about the whole thing, but then… this person basically said that life’s too short, and I agreed with them, and that was sort of that. But it’s still really difficult. We kind of have to sneak around. It’s like being teenagers, but you feel even more stupid, because it’s supposed to be different when you’re an adult, right? At least this is what I keep telling this person, who honestly is pretty unfamiliar with how this all works these days, which is another huge part of the complicated.”

He seemed relatively impassive as her words petered out. “I’m gonna go out on a limb here and ask a question,” he said. “Don’t get offended, okay?”  
  
“Um… okay?”

“This person… is a she, right?”

Myka kept herself from gasping, but only just. And then she got angry at herself for not wanting him to have said it, and for wanting to hide it in the first place, and for not being at all clear on anything anymore. She took a long time trying to formulate her answer, and when she looked up to deliver it, he was smiling, almost chuckling. “What’s so funny?” she asked.

“This is almost the exact same conversation I had with my sister two years ago. Except for the part where I asked you out. I didn’t ask my sister out; that would be weird.”

“Wait, your sister?”

“Is gay. And she did the pronoun dance for years, with everything about how _we_ did this and that, _they_ said this and that, _this person_ and I. And I finally just had to say, Gertrude, honey, I’m pretty sure I’ve cracked your code. You can say ‘she.’”

“Your sister’s name is Gertrude?”

“Our parents, who are, and I say this with love, the worst amateur actors in the world, met on a production of Hamlet. Everybody, and I mean _everybody_ , in our family gets Hamlet names. Gertrude would’ve been Ophelia, of course, but that was their first dog.”

“My middle name’s Ophelia,” Myka admitted.

“Yeah? Sorry about the dog thing, but it wasn’t my fault. Happened before I was born. If it helps any, she was a great dog.”

“But… your name’s Larry.”

“Just wait for it, it’ll come to you. In about three… two…”

“Laertes? Really?”

“Boom. I could show you my birth certificate. I’m just glad it isn’t Fortinbras. Can you imagine how my life at hockey camp would have gone? Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are their current pets, in case you were wondering. Rosie’s a chihuahua, and Gilly’s an enormous cat who outweighs her by at least ten pounds. Inseparable.”

“What’s going to happen when they run out of characters?”

“Honestly? I’m afraid to ask. They’ve still got a few to go, and I’m hoping anyway that Rosie and Gilly live a good long time.”

“You’re right, by the way,” Myka said. “She’s a she.”

“Is that the complicated part?”

“There are not enough words in this language or any other to explain how much I wish to god that _that_ were the complicated part.”

“Do you want to talk about it? You actually sort of sound like you might want to talk about it.”

Myka smiled up at him. She actually sort of did want to talk about it, but she was having trouble imagining a way to do so that didn’t boil down to something like, “So that author, H.G. Wells? Was not a man, is not dead, tried to end the world, then saved it.” The part where they were making out in the backseats of cars like teenagers these days, and sneaking up to her room at the B&B, was really such a minor aspect of the story, but… that was one of the few parts she could talk about. So she thought that maybe she could start with that. “Have you ever fallen for somebody you weren’t supposed to?”

He laughed. “All the time! Started with my teachers in school and just escalated. The less available they are, the more I want them.” He quirked an eyebrow at her, exactly as Helena might have. “You should probably be careful, there, Agent Bering. Now that I know the full extent to which you aren’t interested, I might have to start stalking you and declaring my undying love. I once gave the full Say Anything treatment to a girl, with the boombox and all. I honestly thought she’d fall right from her bedroom window into my arms, but instead, she was just mortified. We were fifteen. In retrospect, I should have seen that response coming, but fifteen is a pretty idiotic age.”

“Isn’t it? Like I said, the part where this makes me feel like a teenager is maybe the most horrible. I hated being a teenager. It was the worst.” Myka hadn’t fully formulated this thought before, but now that she was really thinking it, she realized that she was going to have to take some kind of step in the direction of making it all a little less high school. Because she profoundly did not want to relive those years; the joy of being with Helena was how different it made Myka feel about intimacy, about her body, about every neurosis that had plagued her back then and seemed to delight in finding new inflections with which to continue to torment grown-up Myka. She sighed. “And so I hate having to act like one now.”

“Is _that_ because of the gay thing? Even if it isn’t complicated for you personally, it can still be plenty complicated when you start getting the rest of the world involved.”

This startled Myka, who hadn’t thought much about “the gay thing” at all, really, because… well, if she were being honest with herself, because it hadn’t come up. Larry was the first person who’d asked her out since it started, and she hadn’t even been intending to mention it to him. She realized that she hadn’t been intending to mention it to anyone, and even if she had, she wouldn’t have mentioned it like that. She didn’t know what it _meant_ that she wanted Helena; she just wanted her. And she’d wanted her since the very beginning. (This amused Helena greatly, because as she said, it made her feel like she really hadn’t needed to try as hard as she had done. To which Myka had responded acidly, “People can fall _out_ of love at first sight, too.” Which just made Helena laugh and kiss her, which in turn made Myka conclude that people couldn’t really fall out of love at first sight after all.)

“You’re taking a long time to answer that, too,” Larry said.

“Sorry. Just thinking. It’s weird, but the gay thing isn’t even… I don’t think that’s even an aspect of the _problem_. I mean, I might have a little bit of a problem with it, I don’t know yet, but I think the _problem_ would be exactly the same if one of us were a guy. Well, not _exactly_ the same, but enough the same. It’s this huge work thing; the protocol, and it’s been around a long time, is that people who have her job can’t have that kind of relationship with people who have my job. All these ideas about influence and bias. And then part of it is who she is, too; she’s kind of… unique. In the… organization. She’s done some things that people don’t normally do, and she’s got a level of… experience, I guess, that other people don’t have, and so they don’t want… it’s sort of, they don’t want either of us to be distracted.”

“I can see how you’d be fairly distracting,” he said.

This reminded her of Pete. “Quit it,” she said, as if he _were_ Pete, and she was pleased to see him absorb the teasing blow as it was intended. Well, he did have a sister.

“But seriously,” he went on, “I bet sneaking around is even more distracting, for the both of you, than not having to sneak around would be. Isn’t it?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. Not having ever _not_ sneaked around with her, I can’t say. Maybe even _more_ distracting for the first little while, because of the newness? But then we could start figuring out what normal is? Whereas right now I don’t feel like we’re ever going to get a chance to do that.”

“Well, the good part and the bad part is that nothing goes on forever. Something always changes.”

“That sounds a little pat.”

“Only because it is, Agent Bering. But it’s true. Now, seriously, where are we going for dinner? You can’t turn me down now, not when we’re just getting to the interesting part. What kind of food do you like? I’ve been going a lot to this tiny little Persian place that’s really blindingly good. You gotta like dates, though—the food, I mean, not going out on them—anyway, I swear they put those things in everything from the food to the… can you make placemats out of dates? Because I wouldn’t put that past them. I’ve never been to Iran, so I don’t know if it’s a cultural thing or just the folks who run the place.”

“Persian would be interesting,” Myka allowed. “I’m still not sure if it’s a great idea…”

“Really? She possessive, your girlfriend?”

“Not possessive, exactly. I’d say more… insecure. But,” she hurried to add, “under the circumstances, I don’t really blame her.” And then Myka realized that she’d accepted, without even blinking, his reference to Helena as her girlfriend. She hadn’t known it was possible for one’s heart to leap and clench at the same time. “I don’t always feel completely secure myself.”

“You should,” he said quickly. “Admittedly, I don’t know you incredibly well yet, but you seem like a pretty decent individual. And then there’s the fact that you’re hot as all get out. I feel like I can tell you that, given that I have no shot whatsoever.”

Myka laughed. “You really should be going to dinner with Pete. There are some similarities, which probably extend to sports and that kind of thing, so you’d probably have plenty to talk about. Though you’d lose him on things Hamlet-related.”

“How about your girlfriend? Would I lose her, too?”

“God no. Completely vice versa. She’s the one who’s hard to keep up with, literature-wise.”

“Snooty about it, huh?”

He was clearly teasing, but Myka answered honestly anyway: “Sometimes. Goes on, you know, about how she knows Oscar Wilde and Kipling and Conan Doyle.” Myka did, every now and then, enjoy the little private thrill of saying things that held meanings only she could hear. And the thrill made her wonder, every time, whether Helena had created something new in her or had simply revealed what was there all along.

The private thrill also always made her wish, however, that Helena could be there to share it with her. Because part of the delight of their relationship, she was discovering, was exactly that: what they shared. And the knowledge that no one— _no couple in history_ —had ever shared a significant portion of those things before. Myka hadn’t ever thought she would be unique in terms of the person she ended up with; she’d imagined someone conventional, and herself as conventional too. She’d imagined someone like Larry, in fact: some tall, nice guy who knew about Hamlet and could carry on a conversation.

“I read some Kipling,” he offered now. “Not all of it, of course, because he wrote, what, like fifty things? A hundred? Some big number. Could never get through much of Wilde; he’s kind of snooty himself. And my sister had a Sherlock Holmes phase, so I refused to have one. On principle. I should probably sit down with those at some point, shouldn’t I?”

“I’ll tell you something,” Myka said. “If I weren’t in this… thing that I’m in, I would definitely go to dinner with you. For real. Because I like you a lot.”

“Thank you,” he said. “You see, though, how that doesn’t really get me anywhere.”

“I do see that. But still.”

“And I do appreciate it. But still.”

They smiled at each other. Myka thought that if Helena could see them, she probably would, in fact, get a bit possessive. Myka tried to imagine Helena sitting and talking like this with a guy… she couldn’t picture it. Helena would get bored too quickly. Myka was still amazed that Helena wasn’t bored with _her_ , but maybe that was just what love did for you. If that was the case, then Myka would just have to hope that Helena never stopped loving her. But she was already hoping that, so… she did know, on a level that she didn’t want to acknowledge, that if she and Helena were going to have a real relationship, she was just going to have to accept everything, all of it at once, and stop questioning the why. If she kept worrying at the why, she would never believe any of it, because there would never be a sufficiently compelling why.

Well, all right, if she wanted to keep on being honest, she knew one compelling why, and it had turned out to be exactly as wonderful as she’d always tried very rigorously _not_ to imagine it would be but had in reality always had great hopes about. And she was fairly certain she knew enough about these things to be interpreting correctly that it was pretty compelling for Helena too. (Who she hadn’t thought had been hoping in the same way she herself had, but Myka had turned out to be very wrong about that. A misunderstanding that had been _spectacularly_ resolved.) But of course she worried that that would fade over time. And that fading would be made more likely with the removal of the prohibition, honestly, assuming that that actually happened at some point (because it had to, didn’t it?). Stealing time together made everything urgent; in the absence of that, would they still…

Which was just another clever way of herself trying to scare herself into giving up, she knew. Imagining every way it could go wrong… but not so she could anticipate and head off each of those ways, as she would if this were a plan for bagging some artifact. No, this kind of imagining was to show herself how wrong she had been to fall in love in the first place, how there was no way it could possibly end well and so it would clearly be better to get out while she still had some shred of her heart left.

And that was the only explanation she could think of for why, the next time she and Helena were in bed together… why it was that afterward, as Helena was mouthing kisses gently against her temple, her jaw, her chin, Myka said, “I went out to dinner with a hockey player in Toronto.”

It was as if she had no control at all over the words she uttered; she heard herself say them, and she physically cringed. She thought it was most likely the cringe even more than the words that made Helena freeze and say, with the worst counterfeit of a casual intonation that Myka had ever heard her use, “Oh?”

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot for the life of me understand why the show didn’t make HG a Regent (or whatever) as a way of slapping some sort of prohibition on her and Myka being together. Then you could have an are-they-or-aren’t-they situation—in my thinking, of course, the best scenario is that they are, because of obvious reasons, but also because it would be COMEDY GOLD. I mean, it could be serious sometimes, but honestly, sneaking around, trying (failing) to hide what they’re doing? C’mon, show. That is an uncontested layup (to mix my sports).

And did Myka then say something reassuring, something like “just as friends,” or “to thank him for helping with the case”? No, she did not. And she would look back on it and pretty much want to punch herself in the face, because what she did say was, “Yeah. He was nice.”

Which in turn made Helena disengage herself very carefully from Myka’s body, sit up, and begin reaching for her clothes. “How pleasant for you,” she said. “For you both, I’m sure. You are of course quite an agreeable companion. I should know.”

Myka sat up too, and—again, looking back, she had no idea what her problem had been—said, with genuine confusion, “Well, I guess you should. I mean, we spend a lot of time together.”

“Indeed, yes, we do.” Helena said. Her words were becoming plummier; she was using her “talk to the team” voice, with its edge of what, in front of the others, was something like jocularity. In the dusk of the early-evening bedroom, she sounded only brittle. “Perhaps too much, I am coming to think.”

“Where are you going? If you try to sneak out now, someone’s likely to see you.”

“And that is your primary concern, of course.”

“Look, I didn’t set this whole thing up.”

“No. But it seems to serve your purposes well. You have me, and apparently you can also have your dining companion in Toronto, and no one will be the wiser. What I fail to understand is why you would _tell_ me about it. Is it simply out of a wish to flaunt your desirability? To show that you can have anything you want?”

“What are you talking about? I went out with him because he was nice! Because I liked him! Because I could actually _go_ somewhere, out in public, with him, and not have to worry about whether somebody was going to see us together and get the wrong idea! Or even the _right_ idea! Because it wasn’t against anybody’s rules!”

“No, clearly it was not. Because _we_ , the two of us, _we_ have no rules, no standards of behavior; there would be no reason for you to turn down a gentleman’s advances. I presume he _was_ at least a gentleman about it? That he was… kind to you?”

“For god’s sake, Helena, I went to _dinner_ with him!”

“And there you sit, implying, as you so often do, that I understand _nothing_ about the social interactions of this time period!”

The only thing Myka could think, at this point, other than “what is going on here?”, was that at least Helena wasn’t using that horrible disengaged voice anymore. In fact, she was…

“You’re shouting!” Myka gasped. “Oh my god, _I’m_ shouting!”

“Yeah,” said Pete from the other side of Myka’s bedroom door. “You kind of are. I don’t want to… you know, _alarm_ you or anything, but my mom, for one, is standing here with me, and she’s… well, how can I put this delicately?”

“Open this door,” Jane Lattimer said, “this instant.”

“That’s not very delicate, Mom.”

Myka heard Claudia yell, “Pete’s mom! Artie! I really need you to come downstairs!”

Jane barked, “Claudia, what is the problem? Why do you need us downstairs?”

There was a slight pause, then Claudia yelled, “Because of reasons!”

“Pete,” Jane said, “It becomes ever clearer to me why you get along with these people so well.” Then, to the occupants of the room, “If anyone is escaping out the window, I will personally see that that person is dealt with—”

“Oh for the love of god,” Helena said, and she flung the door open.

“What are you—oh my god!” Myka yelped. Although Helena had managed to get herself almost completely dressed, Myka was still in bed, still almost completely _un_ dressed, and in no conceivable way prepared to receive company, particularly when that company consisted of Jane, Pete, and Artie… not to mention a breathless Claudia, who, having clearly just propelled herself up the stairs at warp speed, panted out, “I tried, guys, and Pete tried too, but if you’re gonna have a screaming match, what are we supposed to _do_?” She looked at fully-clothed Helena, and then at Myka, who had pulled the sheet up to her neck and had also, in the space of five seconds, turned the color of a tomato. “Um… why are you…”

“The ‘screaming match’ you mentioned had a bit to do with the situation as it stands,” Helena offered.

“I cannot believe this,” Artie said. “You know perfectly well that Regents and Agents are not supposed to have… _this kind_ of relationship, and yet it’s perfectly clear what’s going on here.”

“Oh, prove it,” Helena said. She fluttered her hand in his general direction, as if waving off a particularly persistent gnat.

“Really, Helena?” Jane asked. “This is how you want this to go?”

“I don’t particularly wish for it to go any way at all,” Helena said, sounding bored. “You needn’t concern yourselves. It won’t be an issue going forward.”

Whereupon Myka burst into tears. Pete and Claudia both ran to the bed and tried to hug her, but she batted them away, sobbing, “Get out of here!” And then to Helena, “You’re breaking up with me? In front of everybody? _That’s_ the thing we can do in front of everybody, is break up?”

“I believe,” Helena said, “that you are the one who broke up with me. And we did that earlier, before this became a social gathering.”

Claudia looked from one to the other. “I don’t understand. Why are you breaking up? You’re made for each other! What is the _matter_ with you?”

Pete nodded. “I gotta go with Claud on this one. If anybody was meant to get together and stay together, it’s totally you guys.”

Artie roared, “How long has this been going on?”

Claudia clapped a hand to her forehead. “Oh, keep _up_ , Artie. Since they _met_ , practically.” She looked at him pityingly. “Did you seriously not know? I really thought you were just pretending not to know, you know?”

“Believe me, I was not pretending. Apparently,” he said, “I don’t know anything at all about what goes on around here.”

“And it would have been nice,” Claudia muttered, “if it could have stayed that way. But oh no, these two have to go and have their first fight.”

Helena said, still quite mildly, “I can assure you, this is not our first fight. Although it is most likely our last.”

Claudia looked from her to Myka. “I’m gonna ask you one more time: what is the _matter_ with you two?”

Myka had no answer. She was still completely confused about how everything had gone so wrong so quickly—and how Helena had turned, in the space of less than five minutes, from someone naked in bed with her into… her ex? They couldn’t possibly be breaking up, could they? And why had she said that Myka was the one who broke up with her? Sure, what Myka had said to her about being able to actually go out with Larry hadn’t been very nice, but… wait. Did she really, seriously believe that Myka… that she and Larry… she couldn’t possibly believe that, could she? But then Myka considered Helena’s own penchant for not necessarily saying exactly what she meant… it still didn’t make any _sense_ that she would jump to the conclusion that Myka had had any romantic interest in Larry at all, but… but. Myka had even said it, out loud, to Larry: Helena was insecure. Helena was a naked mess of insecurity all dressed up in a flashy bravado suit, and Myka had a tendency to get distracted by the tailoring and forget about the worry underneath. Or rather, and maybe this was worse, to focus on her own worries instead of Helena’s.

“Hold it,” she said, not really believing that she was going to have to verbalize these things in front of everyone, not to mention practically naked. “Helena. Just tell me one thing: do you honestly believe I slept with that hockey player?”

Claudia audibly sucked in a breath, and then expelled it with a shout. “You _slept_ with some _hockey player_?”

Myka wondered if she gave off a far more slutty vibe than she’d always thought she did, what with Helena jumping to the conclusion, and now Claudia apparently being just as willing to believe it. She raised her eyebrows at Pete, who said, “I’m not buying it. When would you have had time? Although,” he went on, in a musing sort of voice, “he did seem like a really nice guy. If you wanted to go back to dudes, you could do worse.”

“You think I didn’t sleep with him,” Myka said, amazed, “because I didn’t have _time_? Not because, oh, I don’t know, I’m in a very serious relationship with someone else, which you know perfectly well is the case, but because I didn’t have the _time_?”

Pete said, “I just meant from a proof perspective. Like, I could practically swear to that in court.”

“If I wanted to sleep around,” Myka fumed, “I would _find_ the time.”

“Geez, when?” Pete asked. “I mean, seriously, tell me, because we’re always running here or there or wherever.”

“Well,” Claudia mused, “she does manage to find the time to get together with H.G.”

“Claudia darling,” Helena said, “that is perhaps not the most helpful information to bring into this situation.”

“Oh. Yeah. Artie, Pete’s mom, what I just said? Didn’t actually ever happen. Probably. I would not be able to swear to it in court, because I did not witness it, because that would be squicky.”

Pete said, “I caught them making out in the Christmas aisle one time, ages ago. Right before the whole trident thing, which—sorry to bring that up, H.G. Anyway, like I said then, I didn’t mean to catch you guys; I swear I wasn’t spying. I just turned the corner and there you were, remember?”

“Pete!” Myka said desperately. “Also not helping!”

“So what you’re saying,” Artie said, remarkably calmly, “is that this has been going on not only lately, in contravention of explicit rules regarding Regent and Agent relationships, but since… _before_?”

Claudia complained, “It’s like you don’t listen to me when I talk. I told you it was basically since they met.” She paused and made a face. “Or not. As I mentioned, I don’t have any actual information.”

And then everyone was talking, saying absurd things about swearing on Bibles and arguing about when Myka and Helena most likely first got together. Helena caught Myka’s eye, quirked an eyebrow, then walked over, apparently unobserved, to sit down on the edge of the bed. “I did jump to a conclusion, or rather a feeling about a conclusion,” she said softly, “and this has been quite the instructive object-lesson in the inadvisability of same.”

“I was an idiot,” Myka told her, just as softly. “I don’t know why I told you like I did. Maybe you were right, maybe I was trying to flaunt something.”

“It could also be the case,” Helena said, taking her hand, “that I from time to time forget that this is as difficult for you as it is for me.”

“Well, ditto. But could you maybe try remembering one thing?”

“What’s that?”

“Actually, it’s two things. Thing one is that if I’m breaking up with you, I’ll actually say the words, okay?”

“All right,” Helena said, and smiled. “And the second thing?”

“Do you really have to ask what the second thing is?”

“No,” Helena said. Her smile grew brighter, but at the same time more intimate. “I do too, you know.”

“Okay!” Myka raised her voice to the rest of the room without taking her eyes off Helena. “Everybody out!”

“Awww,” Claudia said, “they got back together.” With a swift glance at Artie and Jane, she said, “Maybe. Allegedly. Or not. Because if they weren’t together in the first place, how could they get _back_ together?” She pointed at their stern faces. “Ha! Gotcha!” They grew even more stern. “Sort of? A little?”

Artie said, “They are sitting on a bed, holding hands, and one of them is… not clothed!”

“Which could mean _anything_ ,” Claudia said. “Man, Artie, the conclusions you’ll jump to.”

“Helena,” Myka said, “I would like to preface what I am about to say to the assembled company with a very explicit statement: I am _not_ breaking up with you. Got it?”

“Got it,” Helena said. She chuckled.

“All righty,” Myka said. She turned to the others. “First, I meant what I said about everybody out. But before you go, I want to say this: I am not going to do this anymore. I am an adult, Helena’s an adult, and I am just not going to sneak around and then get practically _arrested_ in my _bed_ in my _bedroom_ for _whatever we choose to do together_. This relationship is happening. When it started is not anybody’s business but ours, but regardless of that, it’s happening now. You want to fire me? Go ahead. I love my job, and I’m really good at it, but if that’s the price, then okay. All I ask is that you wait until I get some _clothes on_ , if that’s acceptable to everybody.”

Pete grinned, Claudia applauded, and Jane and Artie had the grace to look at least a little chastened. Then Jane said, “I would like to speak to the both of you downstairs. As soon as is convenient.” She turned and left, Artie in her wake.

Pete said, in a passable imitation of his mother’s tone, “I would like to get some details about what you choose to do together. As soon as is convenient.” Myka threw her pillow at him, which sent him out of the room, yelping.

Only Claudia was left. She picked up Myka’s pillow and hugged it to her chest. “I know you meant me too, but can I ask you guys a favor?”

“Of course, darling,” Helena told her.

“The thing is, Pete’s mom won’t get mad at Pete for knowing about you, because he’s her kid and all. But I knew too, and I’m not her kid, and I think the wrath might fall a little disproportionately, if you know what I mean. So if you could maybe put in a good word for me? She’s already pretty unthrilled about how I went off on her before, and this could really push her over to the dark side where I’m concerned.”

Myka laughed. “I don’t think either of us has much leverage at this point. I’m about to get fired, remember?”

“They’re not gonna fire you,” Claudia said. Then she looked worried. “But no matter what she says, you’re gonna stick to your guns, aren’t you? Because you guys have to stay together. Please don’t fight like that again. I don’t mean the shouting—though that was impressive, just because it happened so _fast_ , I mean you should have _seen_ Pete’s mom and Artie, it was like meerkats on the savanna or something, the way they both jerked their heads up at the same time. So feel free to do that. But what I mean is, I mean the part where I don’t think any of us can take it if you have to _get over_ each other. I know I can’t. Because when Myka tried to get over you before, H.G.? It didn’t work at all. It was awful.”

Myka and Helena looked at each other. “Well,” Helena began, “if our breaking up would represent so much _trouble_ for everyone—”

“We’re not breaking up,” Myka interrupted. “Not ever, if I have anything to do with it. That’s just how it’s going to be, and Helena, if you don’t like it, tough, because you’re stuck with me. Which might get a little tougher for you in a minute, because bear in mind that losing one’s job tends to make a person a little more dependent on her significant other.”

“Oh, Claudia is perfectly right and you know it. You aren’t losing your job. You’ll be slapped on the wrist, as will I, and some kind of accommodation will be made. What I want to know is, why didn’t we do this sooner?”

“Because,” Myka reminded her, “we both agreed, after a certain amount of _discussion_ , that rocking the boat was probably not the best idea at the time. Or have you forgotten _those_ fights?”

“Hold it,” Claudia said. “Where did you have _those_ fights? Because I’m getting the feeling that if you’d had them here, we’d pretty much all have known about them.” When Helena and Myka both turned scarlet, Claudia blinked. She said, “I’ll just take that as the universal symbol for how much I don’t want to know where you’ve been getting your action. But also, guys? You have got to start remembering, for all kinds of reasons, how sound carries in this place. Pete and Steve and I can hum for only so long, you know what I mean?”

“Alas, yes,” Helena said. She was turning back to her normal color.

Myka, on the other hand, could still feel her face burning. Why wasn’t Helena more embarrassed by things that any regular person would be embarrassed by? But of course that was part of her whole _thing_ , as Claudia might have said, so… and Myka tried to be pleased that Helena wasn’t at all embarrassed by, or even self-conscious about, what they did. She didn’t make it all the way to being happy about it, but there was still something kind of compelling about the idea of Helena taking something like _pride_ in it. Myka wanted to be proud too.

“Okay,” Claudia said, “I’m leaving now. And while you may want to put off that _discussion_ you have to have with Pete’s mom, I’d sort of recommend that you get it over with. You didn’t see their faces before—I mean, after the funny part. Scary. Very scary. The feelings of ‘Myka and H.G. are actually kind of cute together’ probably won’t last very long.”

“We’ll be there soon,” Helena assured her. When she was gone, Helena turned back to Myka and said, “Now where were we?”

“Well, before things went to hell in a really unappealing handbasket, you weren’t wearing any clothes.”

“True. And believe me when I tell you that nothing would make me happier than to return to that state right now. However.”

“I know. Believe _me_ , I know. So you better hurry up and kiss me, and then hand me my jeans.”

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This gets a bit less funny—Warehouse rules are, you know, serious business. But then the business becomes less serious. Or possibly more, depending on how seriously you take your… hockey.

And so it was that Myka and Helena presented themselves to Jane and Artie approximately thirty minutes later. (“Hurry up and kiss me” had turned into something else—even so, they would have been there in twenty minutes, but Myka had managed to put her tank top on inside out, which Helena had pointed out to her just as they began to descend the stairs; in retribution, Myka had backhanded her in the stomach, and Helena had caught the offending hand in an extremely tight grip, which led in turn to further distraction.) Myka felt about eight years old; now she was _wishing_ she felt like a teenager, all rebellion and defiance, willing to tell everyone off and flounce out if necessary. Instead, it was exactly like the one time she’d been sent to the principal’s office in elementary school: she’d argued with her teacher about the correct answer to a math problem and absolutely refused to budge from her position. She’d been sure the principal, Mrs. Jankowski, would call her in and say “you’re expelled,” and that her life would end on the spot.

Jane began, “If you had just been up front from the beginning—”

Immediately, Helena interrupted, “We _were_ up front. Not quite from the _beginning_ , but our friends were aware, soon enough. And then… certain events intervened.”

Jane harrumphed. “After which, you apparently picked up where you left off, despite the fact that circumstances— _your_ circumstances in particular, Helena—had changed dramatically. Don’t play dumb with me.”

Myka said, “She’s right, Helena. We knew perfectly well that we were breaking all kinds of rules.”

Helena rolled her neck impatiently. “Ossified, outdated rules.”

Artie looked at her over the rims of his glasses. “You’re a fine one to talk about ossified and outdated.”

“One day, your comments about my age will lose their piquant charm,” Helena said.

Myka said to Jane, “Could you just go ahead and do whatever you’re going to do? If the hammer’s going to fall, could you just hit me with it already?”

Jane said, “Again, I see why Pete fits in so well here. I am not going to hit you with a hammer, by which I mean, I am not going to fire you. Even if that decision were mine alone, which it isn’t, you’re absolutely right in what you said: you’re good at your job. I have no desire to see you stop doing that job.”

Myka sighed. “Well, that’s a huge relief.”

Jane held up an index finger. Myka started thinking about the principal’s office again. “Not so fast. We’re still left with the small problem of… this.” She waved the finger at the two of them.

“ _This_ ,” Helena said, “is not a problem.”

“It’s a _huge_ problem,” Artie snapped. “Rules are rules for a reason.”

Helena sniffed. “I’ll say this slowly, so that everyone can understand it: if you will bother to reflect upon the situation, you will realize that we have already demonstrated that this is not a problem. Neither I nor Myka has made significant errors in judgment thus far, and _this_ has been going on since… well.” She smiled then, as if she couldn’t help herself. Myka thrilled to the giddiness, the lack of composure, on her face. “Certainly since the very _minute_ everything was so blessedly restored.”

“Which Helena made possible,” Myka added. “So doesn’t it seem like the Warehouse would be okay with the whole thing? Like wouldn’t it be… grateful?”

Artie was saying, “You are acting as if everything is crystal clear—as if we get e-mails from the Warehouse itself about what it does and doesn’t approve of. It doesn’t work that way; that’s why we need the rules. We don’t want to get into a situation where anything has to be _fixed_ after the fact.”

“We get into situations like that all the time!” Myka protested.

“But not because Regents and Agents are having… relationships!”

“And yet,” Helena mused, as if absently, “relationships between Agents are encouraged, are they not? So that as few people need be told about the Warehouse as possible?”

“That is true,” said Jane, “but you have to admit, your situation is unprecedented.”

Helena pounced. “And because it is unprecedented,” she said, “the rules in place cannot possibly govern it.” She sighed and said to Myka, “I wish we had thought of this before.”

Myka said, “I’m not sure we were thinking entirely clearly about this at that point. Things were pretty… emotional.”

Helena favored her with a lovesick, completely endearing grin. “They aren’t exactly _unemotional_ now, are they.”

Myka tried to keep from grinning back. She was unsuccessful. “I don’t think you’re helping our case,” she said.

“I am _past the point_ of caring,” Helena said.

Artie said, with more weariness than venom, “You’ll appreciate, I hope, that not everyone is past that point.”

“All we want,” Myka started. She choked up. “Is to be together. Because we have to be. We’ll find a way. Fire me, fire her, lock us up, it doesn’t matter. Blow us up, bronze us. Put somebody’s body in Wyoming. Try what you want. You’ve seen what we’ll do to get to each other, to save each other. That’s just how it is, and that’s not going to change. We’ve already made the decision.” She tightened her grip on Helena’s hand, just because, and at that same instant she felt Helena’s fingers grip hers more closely as well. Her heart soared in a way that was quickly becoming familiar.

“Oh, Myka,” Jane sighed. And as if a switch had been flipped, Myka could suddenly see Pete in her eyes, his sweet empathy.

“Myka,” Artie said. His eyes didn’t show a lot of empathy, and Myka braced herself. “It isn’t that anyone thinks you shouldn’t make your own decisions. And when I say ‘you,’ I mean _you_. Miss Wells’s more… impetuous nature is well-documented.”

“You cannot be serious,” Helena interrupted. “I mean, really, you _cannot_ be seriously suggesting that this is a debate about my maturity level. Whatever you may believe it to be, or whatever it may actually be, it couldn’t possibly matter less. How many times must Myka and I both remind you that we are not at a stage in our lives at which we need ask anyone’s permission?” She was really getting going now; Myka could feel the tension in the hand holding hers. “This is worse than anything I experienced in my past—my previous-centuries past, that is. Of course there were all manner of social strictures in place at that time, but I cannot imagine a state of affairs under which anyone, even my brother, would have presumed to tell me that I was not adult enough, once I had reached the age of majority, to make my own choices. Not _male_ enough, certainly, but that argument seems finally to have had its day. So on what basis, Artie, do you dare imply that… well, I’m not sure exactly what you’re implying. That my feelings for Myka are not real? That this is a passing fancy of some sort? A momentary _dalliance_?”

“Honey,” Myka said. She used the endearment on purpose; it had a tendency to bring Helena up short, and she needed to be stopped before this confrontation with Artie became something that neither of them would be able to come back from.

The word had an effect, though not quite the intended one: Helena turned to her, eyes glittering with anger, and snapped, “What?”

Artie snarked, “Oh, _that_ was mature.”

Helena made a frustrated noise, as if she couldn’t make up her mind which occupant of the room she wanted to tesla first.

“Here is what we are going to do,” Jane said. Myka could see why she’d made a good teacher—she was effortlessly firm and decisive, not at all blustery like Artie. “I am going to speak with the Council, because I agree that we’ve perhaps been too eager to follow certain protocols that do not fit the contours of what you quite rightly point out is an unprecedented situation. I think that we’ve perhaps failed to deploy Helena’s unique talents to their best advantage. Now that we’re farther down the road, I suspect that the Council will take a… brighter view of what might be accomplished.” She smiled at Helena, and at Myka. “I’m not a monster. No one on the Council is. Our goal is to protect the Warehouse, and if there is a better way to do that… well. I think I can make a good argument that that is the case here.”

Artie pressed his palms to his temples. He said, very quietly, “Really?”

“Artie,” Jane said. “Look at the evidence. Look clearly at the evidence. I think you’ll see that Myka’s right.”

Artie sighed. “It’s just going to be so… difficult. Pete said it upstairs: there’s no time for this kind of thing!”

“No time,” Myka repeated. “No time to… I don’t know, eat breakfast? No time to come home at the end of a long day? To watch some stupid movie with Pete and Claudia and Steve? I do all those things now. Why can’t I do them with Helena?”

“And when she’s gone,” Artie challenged. “What will you do then?”

“I’ll miss her,” Myka said. “I’ll miss her just like I do now when she’s gone, like I’ve done so many times. And then I’ll set that aside, like I’ve done so many times, and I’ll do my job.”

“As will I,” Helena said. “And any task I am set will be so much easier if, when I have done, I can come back to you.”

Artie sighed again.

“The _evidence_ ,” Jane repeated, a bit more sternly. She raised both hands to stop further discussion. “I have calls to make. A Council meeting to call. Helena, I’ll have to ask you to stay here and not join us for this debate.”

“I would be happy to,” Helena said.

“Of course,” Artie said. “Of course you’re happy. I’m glad somebody is. I’m going to the Warehouse.”

As he steamed out, Jane said, “I’ll talk to him. I’ll ask Mrs. Frederic to speak to him as well. And… I apologize. I wasn’t in possession of all the facts—not to mention, I wasn’t in possession of a correct interpretation of the facts I did have. You both deserved better.”

Helena reached out a hand; she touched Jane’s arm briefly. Then she said what to Myka’s ears was an astonishingly sincere and unadorned “thank you.”

Jane quirked an eyebrow at her. “Don’t let me down,” she warned. Then she followed Artie’s path out.

“Well,” Helena said.

“Well,” Myka said back.

“Well?!” Claudia exclaimed from somewhere up the staircase. “You get two of the scariest people I know to back down and basically give you everything you want, and all you can say is ‘well’?!”

“Were you listening the whole time?” Myka sighed. She took Helena’s hand and pulled her up the stairs to meet Claudia on the landing.

“Pretty much. Pete got bored and went to watch TV, though. He said he’s seen his mom do her thing enough times.”

Myka was genuinely puzzled. “What she did, was that the thing he thought she was going to do?”

“Beats me,” Claudia shrugged. “Pete!” she shouted. “What’d you think your mom was gonna do?”

“Cave!” Pete shouted back.

“Well I wish you had let _me_ in on that!” Myka yelled at him.

He shouted, “It was all over when you said the thing about how you had to be together! Once she comes around, she’s really a softie!”

“She hides it pretty well!” Claudia hollered.

“Perhaps,” Helena suggested, “we could go to Pete’s room and speak with him. Face to face. A bit more quietly.”

Claudia bellowed, “Pete! We’re coming to your room!” and Myka smiled when Helena raised her eyes heavenward.

When Myka got a look at what Pete was watching, however, she said, “I think we’ll be leaving now.”

“Why?” Claudia asked. “It’s just a hockey game. I mean… uh oh.”

Helena lasered in on Claudia, then on Pete, then on the TV. “A hockey game,” she said. “Indeed?”

“Yeah,” Pete said, “it’s the Blue Jackets against the… oh, I get it. Sorry, Mykes, I’ll change the channel, or cut it off, or maybe throw something through the—”

“Heavens no,” Helena said, with no small amount of silk. “If I am understanding the situation correctly. You must point the gentleman out to me.”

“Actually, he just came in, because the Leafs are pretty much out of it at this point. He’s… wait a minute, bad angle…”

Myka said, “Pete, is there an actual _reason_ why you want to make my life difficult?”

“What, by pointing out your boyfriend? Like H.G. could get any kind of look at him in all his gear anyway. Oh, wait, see, that’s him right there!”

Helena said, “Well. He certainly appears… strapping.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty tall,” Pete agreed. “A little beefy. Good-looking, I guess, if you go for that kind of Hockey-Night-in-Canada thing. Which I never thought Myka did, but you learn new stuff all the time, right?”

“How true,” Helena agreed. She was watching Larry on the ice. “I myself have never skated. Perhaps I’ll need to learn, if I’m to hold Myka’s attention.”

Myka said, “If you could maybe not torture me. We just had a really bad situation, or I did—I guess it wasn’t so bad for you, because you had your clothes on the entire time, but I am really not a fan of people seeing me naked.”

Helena waved her hand. “They didn’t _see you_ naked. They saw _that you were_ naked. Completely different.”

“Not different enough!”

Helena said, “Oh, I think there’s an enormous difference. For example, would you like it if I were restricted only to seeing _that you were_ naked?”

“Right this minute?” Myka asked. “Yeah, I might be fine with that.”

Now Helena looked away from the screen. “You are _far_ too sensitive,” she said.

This was really too much, even if Helena was joking. “ _I’m_ far too sensitive? I’m sorry, which one of us nearly lost her mind at the news that I ate dates with a hockey player?”

That got Helena’s actual attention. “Is that a euphemism?” she asked suspiciously.

“What? No, it isn’t a euphemism! We went to a Persian restaurant and there were dates in everything, including muddled into my diet soda!”

Pete whistled. “Wow, that sounds dirty.”

“Pete, shut up!” Myka ordered.

Helena, as if explaining something to a particularly dense student, noted, “He isn’t wrong.”

Myka was unclear on whether she should be laughing at Helena or smacking her. “You shut up too!”

Whereupon Claudia said, with an exaggerated sigh, “I’ve heard, through the thin walls of this establishment, these particular tones of voice way too often not to know what’s about to go down here. And when I say go down, I unfortunately mean—”

“Claudia!” Myka exclaimed in horror.

Helena said, in exactly the same tone of voice, “She isn’t wrong either.” She grabbed Myka and marched her out of Pete’s room. Myka heard the volume of the hockey game increase to “earsplitting.”

And for some reason, that, combined with the way Helena was looking at her, with that bright, bright stare of intent, made Myka melt. “All right. But remember, they can hum—or listen to really loud hockey—for only so long.”

Helena pulled Myka into the—no, _their_!—bedroom and slammed the door. She propelled Myka toward the bed. “Let’s test their limits, shall we? I have decided that I adore the sound of hockey.”

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original part 3 tumblr tags: I do like hockey, but I think the other thing would be more fun to watch, because of more body checking, right?


End file.
